'Tintin' Koeman will always get a mention in Barça history for scoring the goal that handed Barça victory in the 1992 European Cup at Wembley. The Dutch defender was one of the central figures in the Dream Team, being a masterful player just in front of the defence and being the provider of amazing pinpoint passes.

Actually, in this case, I feel both Varane and Diego Lopez did the right thing. Hear me out.

Varane was beating Alexis in speed and forced him to pull back away from him. Diego Lopez was correct in running out of his line a few more meters because it wasn't 100% certain Varane would stop him and he had to narrow Alexis' shooting option else he would have done what he did to Casillas. When Alexis was beaten in speed and pulled back, Lopez was already on his way back to the line. Alexis had maybe 3 seconds before the window of opportunity closed, and he executed perfectly.

The big failure was Marcelo who for some stupid cocky reason though Varane would be enough to stop Alexis and just stopped in his tracks waiting for Varane to recover the ball and pass it to him. If he had followed, he would have caught up with Alexis when he did his little pull-back to give himself space.

This is a ridiculous thread of comments. Varane was at fault for neither goal, and it's pretty petty of you guys to try to claim otherwise. On the first one, he was part of a double team, perfectly positioned to block the shot, but it took a brilliant/unlucky deflection to get by him. Nothing any defender could've done intentionally to block that.

Second goal he completely cut off any breakaway Alexis might have had, closed down the space to shoot, and was prepared to defend him 1-on-1. Lack of support from Marcelo and questionable positioning by Lopez led to the goal.

Puyol himself could not have done better than Varane did on those two goals - in fact, Puyol's done a lot worse in the last year, as have Pique and Masch.

It's petty to gloat in a victory and not recognize good performances. Varane's an absurdly good defender, and though he does make mistakes, this wasn't one of them.